


A Thousand Paper Cranes

by AllTheNamesIWantedWereUsed



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, Origami, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, might add on, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 19:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10472169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllTheNamesIWantedWereUsed/pseuds/AllTheNamesIWantedWereUsed
Summary: Alex Reagan had heard if you made a thousand paper cranes, you could make a wish and it would come true. But does it work?





	

When she was little, still in the phase of pigtails and monsters in the closet, Alex Reagan met this little boy in her second grade class named Michael, who was obsessed with origami. She'd sat next to him, mesmerized as he folded paper with dizzying precision into all sorts of creatures. Once, he’d even shyly given her a purple paper crane.

 

Delighted, Alex took it home,  showing it off to her parents. Her father teased her about ‘her boyfriend,” though her mother had an entirely different focus other than romance.

 

“You know, they say if you make a thousand paper cranes, you get to make a wish and it'll come true,” her mother said, smiling at Alex as crow's feet lined the corners of her eyes.

 

Intrigued, Alex had asked Michael to teach her how to make paper cranes, which he was all too eager to do, happy to share his talents with someone who cared.

 

Half a school year and many deformed cranes later, Alex was finally able to proudly hold aloft a decent origami crane. Unfortunately, Michael came to school, dejected, the next week, wringing his freckled hands as he told her that his dad had gotten a job all the way down in Florida.

 

He left for sunny Florida three weeks later.

 

Alex's interest in origami diminished with the loss of her friend, and slowly she lost the patience to continue making paper cranes without Michael's encouragement, and that purple paper crane she once treasured so much became lost in her room, and Alex didn't see it again until the day she was cleaning her room in preparation to move out.

* * *

 

As Alex's insomnia worsened, Dr. Bernier suggested she come up with a fairly mundane task to do until she became tired again.

 

“What about origami?” she offered.

 

Alex's memory was fairly rusty when it came to origami,  but with the help of her faithful friend The Internet, it only took a night or so to get the gears turning once more. The more she practiced, the less crude the cranes became.

 

She bought colored paper in bulk, and began crafting the cranes during the nights she stayed awake, her tired fingers folding and creasing paper. Amalia had found it amusing as the little paper birds began cropping up all over the house, in a rainbow of colors. She numbered them too, so that she would know when she hit a thousand.

 

Eventually, they found their way into the studios at PNWS. Both Nic and Strand were befuddled by the invasion, and on several occasions Strand could be seen fiddling with a brightly colored paper crane.

 

“Alex,” he said one day, “where on Earth do you find the time to make these?”

 

“At night, when I can't sleep,” she responded.

 

He was silent for a few minutes. Then... “Could you teach me?”

 

A little surprised, Alex recovered quickly and grabbed a few pieces of copy paper and pulled the good doctor over to a table to demonstrate how to make one.

 

His first was rather disastrous, and judging by the furrow in his brow, he was well aware. Alex held in her laughter and helped him perfect making the cranes.

 

“Why do you number them?” he asked her, watching her as she scribbled down a number in Sharpie on one of them.

 

“People say if you make a thousand paper cranes, you get to make a wish and it comes true,” she answered, and his replying scoff made her realize how childish it sounded.

 

“Wishes and luck aren't determined by making a thousand little paper birds,” he said dismissively.

 

“No, but isn't it a nice thought?” Alex countered, reaching over to write a simple number 1 in Sharpie on his first malformed crane.

 

She heard him mutter about false hope under his breath, but pretended to not have heard him.

 

Months passed, and the paper cranes crowded Alex's living space, as she came closer and closer to the one thousand mark.

 

The next time she went to Strand’s place, a multitude of numbered paper cranes overflowed trash cans and littered the mantel and floors.

 

A while later, Alex and Strand made their one thousandth paper crane.

 

The next day, they found Coralee, or rather, she found them.

 

It was obvious to Alex what Strand had wished for, even if he didn’t think the two events were related. It disappointed her, too, that the non-believer in almost everything save the Scientific Method had gotten his wish.

 

She supposed he deserved to have a wish granted, though.

  
Still, she held out hope that her wish would soon come true.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment/kudos, please! It was just a little idea I had


End file.
